


I'll Show You Mine

by softieghost



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Genderfluid Yuri Plisetsky, Podium Family, Post-Canon, Yuuri Yuri friendship is so important, Yuuri's anxiety and Yuri's potty mouth go well together, and they both skate away their problems, but its still important to me lmao, my HC for genderfluid Yuri shows up for about one line of narration, rated T for Yuri's potty mouth and the word "dick" used exactly once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 23:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11367750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softieghost/pseuds/softieghost
Summary: They skated together in silence for a while. It was just laps and figures that had been ingrained in them since they were kids on different continents 8.5 years apart. Katsudon's silence was often more telling than his words. He always waited for you to come to him and he never pushed even when it would have been easy. He only ever pulled, slowly, until you were butting up against him and then he would put his arms around you like it was a coincidence you were there at all.Yuuri and Yuri skate their problems out.





	I'll Show You Mine

Despite his public reputation Yuri Plisetsky was generally grateful for everything that he had - his friends, which included more people than Otabek, his family, which extended beyond his Grandfather, and his career, which was no longer just a means to an end. He knew how to say 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' and 'please' and he said those words as often as he could without embarrassing himself.

Right now, though, he was every cliché wrapped up in a tabloid story as he fished out an old key, once painted red with nail polish to distinguish it but now old and worn, from his pocket. Yakov had pressed the key into his hand two years prior once Katsudon and The Old Man ran away on their honeymoon. He had grumbled about "someone needing to keep the spare" and "responsibility of the senior skaters" and a whole bunch of shit like that despite Georgi still existing, somehow, writhing uncreatively in the confines of the Sports Palace.

Yuri jammed the key into the locked back door of the Palace with all the anger he could muster and shoved hard enough to make the old, rusted hinges squeak as they moved under his weight.

The hallway he walked into was dark and damp and smelled like sweat even though it wasn't anywhere near exercise rooms or the locker room. The whole Palace smelled like sweat and cleaner and air freshener no matter where you walked. It really pissed him off, sometimes, to not be able to escape the locker room stench even when he was in the offices of the FFKKR or his sport psychologist’s room or the cafeteria. Yakov's office was the worst, though - nearly mildewed with years of skaters going through its entryway like a fast food restaurant, in and out in five minutes, five months, five years just to be replaced with another young hopeful. "Gold medal please, super-size it."

By the light of his phone on flashlight mode Yuri walked down the hall with his skate bag digging into his shoulder and bumping against his hip. No matter what brand or size or style his left shoulder always hurt under the weight of his clothes and skates and bottles like some kind of bad metaphor. His footsteps and the rustle of the bag as it swung were the only noise in the whole building. It was nearly 10 at night and even the most dedicated and desperate athletes were long gone, sent home by coaches and administrators and aching joints only to get up at 6 to do it over again.

Pressing his shoulder into another cold and damp metal door Yuri pushed into the rink from the service hallway. Some of the lights were on, creating a dim yellow glow that he could see through. There was already a bag on a bench. There was another sound in the rink besides his own grumblings.

Yuri came to skate alone every once in a while when things got really bad. Sometimes his brain had a million ideas in it, jumbled on top of one another, building and falling and crushing together like derby cars until he couldn't hear anything else. Meditation didn't work and melatonin made him groggy and running out at midnight in his neighborhood was dangerous so he always ended back at the source, like a sad woman with a mean boyfriend, back again to the thing that hurt him to try and fix it. "Don't look for salvation in the hands of the devil." Dedushka would say. Yeah right, what else does the devil have if not a promise, he would say back.

Apparently Yuuri Katsuki was also rooting around in the palm of the devil this time of night. Yuri dropped his bag on the floor below Katsudon's and stood, watching, not knowing whether to leave or stay or announce himself or slink back out into the night, pussycat style. Indecision and the churning in his stomach from his own need to skate held him to the floor as he watched Katsudon skate around the rink.

Triple axle. Clean. Step sequence. Fast. Quad salchow. As good as the day Yuri gave it to him in Japan. Quad flip. Stumbled, broken, botched. Ah. Katsudon was rooting in the palm of his husband, not the devil.

Yuri ripped his skate guards off and flung them on the floor next to his bag and took the ice like the day of competition - big and bold steps before grinding to a halt center stage, showering Katsudon with ice shards just because he could.

"I thought I was the only idiot with a key."

"I took Viktor's." Katsudon didn’t seem surprised to see Yuri. He pushed his glasses up his nose as Yuri slung out his hand for Katsudon to grab and pulled him up. Yuri was taller now, even when he was barefoot and Katsudon had skates on. Yuri was almost as tall as Viktor, now, which was horrible and strange. He towered over Otabek which was almost nice.

"I'm not helping you up anymore tonight."

Yuri took off, dropping his hands, and began to do laps, pulling cold air into his lungs. He skating with his hands clasped behind his back at first, pretending to have some kind of control but could only keep it up for half a minute before his arms swung free like a runner. Made sense, since he was running after all.

As Yuri went round and round like a marble in a cone at a science museum, specimen-like, Katsudon continued to skate some half-baked routine in the center of the rink. Viktor was right about one thing in his life and that was Katsudon's ability to make music with his body. Yuri could almost hear the crescendos as Katsudon jumped, the measures of chaos as his obnoxiously difficult step sequence got faster and faster, the lowering of the conductor's arms as she brought the music to a halt when he fumbled. She would grimace and yell at some trumpeter who was playing too loud and fast for the piece. And she would pick her arms up again and then Katsudon was off, right in front of left, spinning and turning and changing direction like he too might have been running.

Yuri peeled his eyes away and looked in front of himself. He watched the ice move below him and felt the slow, but inevitable burn in his thighs and he continued to go around the rink. He was close enough to the boards that he could stick his arm out and make himself fall if he wanted too. That kind of self-destruction would be just what russiaskate.ru would want. Star Magazine would say his bruise was the result of a fight. Yakov wouldn't say anything but he would know, somehow, and Otabek would know even better, reading Yuri's mind with his brown eyes through Skype more so than anyone could do in person.

Yuri turned to skate backwards. Katsudon fucked up the flip again, and fell to the ground like gravity was worse just for him.

Thunk.

Thud.

Crash.

Burn.

Yuri watched it all, squashing down his evening's crisis with the distraction of Katsudon's anxiety. Watching Katsudon made him feel calm and hopeful and awed and all other kinds of emotions no one else brought out. Watching Viktor made him angry and watching Mila made him jealous in ways he was afraid to quantify and watching Georgi made him bored and watching Otabek made his throat tight and eyes hot which was really just dumb and not at all related to how it also made his dick hard in his pants at night.

Watching Katsudon fail, then, got him all kinds of riled up which wasn't the best when he was already bursting at the seams. Breath puffed past his lips. He swiped his hair out of his eyes and stopped at the boards near his water bottle, still full from earlier in the day. The water tasted like plastic.

"God, fine, I'll fucking bite. What's the fucking matter?" He yelled. Katsudon wasn't that far away.

"Sorry. I didn't want to distract you." Katsudon mumbled as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Stop fucking apologizing, I'm the one crashing the goddamned party. But what the fuck is up with that flip, huh?"

Katsudon pulled up next to him. They leaned against the boards like it was noon, drinking from their water bottles as Yuri pretended he didn't want to eat lunch together.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

"You first, then." Yuri huffed, slamming his bottle down onto the boards. It fell over to the other side, out of his reach. He yelled a little, but just a little.

Katsudon skated out the center of the ice. His beginning pose was a hunched back and crossed arms like he was unsure of himself but with a twirl he transformed like Sailor Moon into the new and improved Katsudon that so many teenaged boys and girls loved. His routine was half finished but urgent like an essay due at midnight. The flip brought him down like it had all evening.

"You bringing that mess to your last season?" Yuri called out.

"Viktor wants to adopt a kid."

"Ah."

"I don't. At least not now." Katsudon was laying on the ice, splayed out. His hands were stretched out, palms down, probably cold. His ring glittered in the shitty florescent light.

Yuri skated over to stand above Katsudon but didn't offer to help him up because he was a man of his word after all so instead he sat down next to him, not caring that sitting cross-legged in ice skates was probably dangerous and that his ass was going to freeze.

"He's not willing to wait?"

"He says it's fine but he also doesn't clear his search history. He keeps looking at cribs and baby clothes and parenting books and it's, God, it's terrifying me."

Katsudon pushed his hands up under his glasses, now askew, to rub at his closed eyes before continuing.

"I keep thinking, what if this is it, after all we've done in almost four years, what if this is what kills it."

"He'd never let you go, dumbass."

"Wouldn't that be worse? To lay next to someone who resents you?"

Yuri shifted where he sat. His ass was cold which was uncomfortable but an excellent distraction from his own reason for coming to the Palace. He continued to look down at Katsudon who really did look just pathetic flung put on the ice like a toddler. Yuri smiled down at him and hoped he didn't look to predatory. That's what Otabek had said - eyes of a soldier, mouth like a tiger, hungry.

"Do you want kids at all?"

"I think so. It's a nice fantasy, but you know I - ."

"Then what, specifically, are you afraid of?" Yuri cut him off. It was hard for him to imagine that Katsudon would be hesitant to do anything for Viktor.

"Failure. It's what I'm always afraid of. But failing a kid is a lot worse than failing yourself, you know? Like that's...that's your world, right? Fucking that up would ruin everything."

"But even if you fucked up Viktor could fix it. And the other way around, too, right? I'm not really a goddamned expert in family over here but that's what I've heard. One parent is good at one thing and the other is good at another thing."

Yuri pushed his hair put of his face again. Looking down at Katsudon made it easier to breathe, somehow, even though he wasn't performing.

Yuri continued -

"Like, that's agape, right? You sacrifice everything for some fucking bean of a kid and they love you and forget to call and you say you'd do it all over again?"

Katsudon sat up. They were tucked together, two Yuris, squeezed next to each other with their knees almost touching, close enough to kiss, taking up as little room as possible even though they were alone and dwarfed by the windows and seating and concrete walls.

"Kids are always products their parents. I don't wanna fuck it up."

Yuri laughed at that. It was a small laugh that rolled into a bigger one. He was nearly splayed out from it as he laughed at the thought of sweet, brilliant Yuuri Katsuki fucking up a kid.

"You don't need to laugh, Yurio."

"I'm, like, the epitome of fucked up from bad parenting and let me tell you that there's nothing you could do to ruin a kid besides abandon it or hurt it and I don't think you'd be the one to run away from home or raise a hand."

Yuuri cocked his head to the side. He realized as Yuri laughed at him that maybe he hadn't said the right thing to the kid who had to find his own family at 10, chase after it at 15, and start to build it up again at 16, 17, 18, and even now at a fresh 19.

"Is that why you're here?" Katsudon asked, all innocent and wide eyed. If Katsudon had a superpower it would be to make people tell the truth with his big brown eyes because before he could even think Yuri was standing and shouting to the ceiling.

"My dumb fuck of a mother ruined my life again."

He skated backwards to make room between himself and the immobile Katsudon as he worked through last season's step sequence. It was the very beginning of the off season so he hadn't planned anything for the Fall out yet and as he no longer lived with the Scariest Woman in the World nothing new had been given to him, either.

"She, get this right, she gave my fucking dad my address. So he wrote me a goddamned hand written letter about how he wanted to get to know me."

He jumped into a fucked up triple axle, landing on his ass hard enough to grunt, oof, ugly.

"You normally jump better when you're angry." Katsudon called over from where he was still sitting. Yuri could hear the small, amused smile in his voice.

"I'm not angry." Yuri admitted. It was harder for him to say that than anything else in his life. His anger had become a childhood blanket wrapped around his shoulders so long ago that casting it off was almost dangerous because anything that came out to replace it was unfamiliar territory. Even though his friends had long since gathered that his bark was far worse than his bite showing just how weak his jaw was made him terrified.

Katsudon stood up and skated over cautiously, smile gone from his face.

"Are you scared?"

"I'm fucking lost."

They skated together in silence for a while. It was just laps and figures that had been ingrained in them since they were kids on different continents 8.5 years apart. Katsudon's silence was often more telling than his words. He always waited for you to come to him and he never pushed even when it would have been easy. He only ever pulled, slowly, until you were butting up against him and then he would put his arms around you like it was a coincidence you were there at all.

"I don't know him. He probably saw me on TV and realized I had Olympics money and wanted in. He didn't do any of the hard part. He didn't deal with all this shit in my life but he says he's sorry or whatever and it's like, go fuck yourself. I pay Dedushka's rent and I pay for his pills and I let mom steal from me when I see her once a year and now you want in? Fuck off."

Yuri was shaking in his boots, literally, as they skated. Years of bottled up pain was slowly leaking out onto the ice he worshipped and into the brain of someone he respected. Sharing had never been his strong suit but now he didn't want what he was giving away back. He balled his hands into fists so even when Katsudon shoved it towards him he would have to let it drop.

"Most people would say you should give him a chance but I don't think that's true."

Despite knowing how painfully kind Katsudon was it still shocked Yuri to not have his own hurt thrown in his face.

"You're 19 years old and he's never tried, to your knowledge, to know you before? That's his loss, not yours." Katsudon continued.

"It makes me so fucking confused. I opened this letter thinking it was some weird fan that figured out where I lived but instead it was 'hello Yuratchka' like he knew me or whatever. Like I was just supposed to accept it."

Yuri stopped skating and threw his hands into the air, keeping his hands balled up.

"It’s like..God. Fuck. It's like he thinks I didn't find someone to replace him. Like he thinks I need him around still. I fucking don't."

His eyes were suddenly very itchy and his face felt hot. Weird ice-induced allergies were the only explanation to the tears that were breaking free of his lower lids.

“You might not need him around but do you want him around?

Yuri didn’t answer. He just swallowed thickly and looked ahead to avoid looking into Katsudon’s I-Will-Make-You-Admit-It eyes.

"You're not a bad person if you decide not to respond." Katsudon reached out his hand for Yuri to take.

"I know.”

They skated together again, hand in hand, like some kind of messed up pain-date. Yuri snuck a glance over at his partner. Viktor once said that Yuuri’s eyes always sparkled when he was searching for something and it was true, even behind thick glasses, Yuri could see his mind turning over the questions and answers and worries and solutions.

"You're not a bad person for not wanting to have his kids."

"I know.”

 

* * *

 

The ice, as always, was cold and unforgiving the next morning. Staying out late when you needed to wake up at 6 or 7 in the morning was never a good idea Yuri reminded himself as he crawled out of bed. He looked over at the letter perched on his dresser. He looked over at the lighter he had stolen from Otabek to keep him from smoking (as if it helped).

_I know you probably hate me but if you agree to meet I'd like to explain. I assume your mother isn't always the easiest to deal with, still, and I can assure you she was like that in the beginning. Not that I can entirely blame her for my absence. Yuratchka, if you wish, meet me some weekend in Saint Petersburg, even if you just want to tell me to leave._

Yuri read the important part over and over again. Maybe he'd decide at practice. It would be easier to make a decision after he forgot about it for a while.

That was a goddamned lie, of course. He couldn't forget about it, not when he saw the tiny lines of tension in Katsudon's body as he and Viktor walked in together, still hand-in-hand. As this was his last season competing they had been at the rink every day, determined to make it a successful one which was pretty dumb of them since they already had enough golds between them to tile a bathroom and, knowing Viktor, they probably would. That or a nursery.

A baby Katsuki-Nikiforov would be cute but only because it would throw up on Viktor all the time, Yuri decided. When he told Katsudon they laughed together while Viktor pouted.

Yuri knew Katsudon would raise a damn good kid, too. He would try everything to make it happy. He's sacrifice himself for his family the same way his family sacrificed for him and how Dedushka sacrificed and how Yakov sacrificed and how even Viktor, idiot savant of a grown baby Viktor sacrificed for those around him.

"Oi, by the way, don't wait up for me for lunch. I need to go buy stamps."

"That's funny, I was going to say the same thing to you. We're heading over to the bookstore to buy a baby book."

Yuri, not for the first time but definitely for one of the better times, pulled Yuuri into a tight hug.

"You'll be alright." He said. He meant it, for the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this belongs in a universe I'm still kind of writing but I really like this part so I'm posting it without anything else. Hey, maybe one day I'll get around to posting the rest, especially if you let me know what you think. I did just delete over 20k though so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Very open to constructive criticism :3


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